[media-credit id=75 align=”alignright” width=”224″][/media-credit] It would be hard to imagine a prettier, more relaxing setting than The Broadmoor for the Women’s Wellness Weekend.

The message for the Women’s Wellness Weekend at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs April 12-14 seemed to be choices and how they affect our overall wellness, and it started being delivered with the welcome on Friday.

He was one of the first-night speakers, and he began with a few sobering statistics for the super-healthy state of Colorado. The good news: We’re still No. 1 for the lowest obesity rates for adults. The bad? It will hit you right in the well-honed gut: We’re No. 23 for childhood obesity.

That’s right. If we don’t make some changes and fast, our hard-earned healthiest-state rankings are going to sink faster than a chocolate doughnut in an extra-foam latte.

[media-credit id=75 align=”aligncenter” width=”495″][/media-credit] More than 1,800 people registered to run in the first Commitment Day event held Jan. 1 in Denver.

Getting up before, say, noon on New Year’s Day isn’t most people’s idea of a good time, but running a 5K at 9 a.m. on Jan. 1 turned out to be the perfect way to start 2013.

This was the first Commitment Day run (commitmentday.com) put on by Life Time Fitness, which rolled out in Denver and 25 other cities last week, with 39,016 signed up to run nationwide, according to Lauren Flinn, public relations specialist for Life Time. More than 1,500 were said to have actually shown up in Denver, but 1,820 had registered, with a portion of their $39 fee going toward a handful of charities (you could also waive your registration and instead enter by fundraising a larger entry fee for charity).

As usual, groups in tutus and other costumes turned out to have a good time, and it wasn’t a race, so families were walking with strollers and. My family — including one teen who began under some protest but ended smiling — ran the whole way if only to stay warm in the starting temperature of 18 degrees.

Denver residents Kaitlin Pianowski and Michael Bermel knew their trip to Cancun was going to be “magical,” they say, but they never expected it to be this special.

As they were checking in for their flight home at Cancun International Airport yesterday, they were informed by the gate agent that they were going to be upgraded to First Class. Why? Because the computer had determined that Pianowski was the 14 millionth passenger in 2012.

“We were in shock,” Pianowski says. “We were led to security, where we met the director of tourism, the director of sales for the airport, and the director of the Cancun Airport. A woman then appeared dressed in traditional clothing with a banner congratulating me on being the 14 millionth passenger.”

Trip planning can be a blast. It can also be stressful. Guidebooks are a great starting place regardless.

Everybody has their own unique style of travel, right? It’s why people like to say, “If you travel well with somebody, you’ll be just fine when you _____________.” (Fill in the blank, really — “get married,” “move in together,” etc.)

Mom and I travel well together, but we do have different styles. I’m a backpacker — crowded bus terminals, on-the-fly decisions, hilarious amounts of discomfort and all. Surely if my mom were 40 years younger, she’d be into the comedy of 25-hour bus rides and dorm sleeping accommodations in gun-filled train station basements. But my mom isn’t a backpacker, and while she doesn’t need four-star hotels, she prefers to have a western toilet attached to her room.

It’s actually a wild story: Front range resident Nora Pykkonen was considering a move to the mountains to help her ski-racing kids be closer to the snow. Instead of buying a house on the slopes, she bought a slope next to the city — with the intentions of making it into a private ski-racing training facility.

We told you it was wild — potentially unprecedented, even!

What do you think? Will you miss Echo’s crazy proximity to Denver, or do you love the out-there story of a mom buying a ski mountain for her kids (and their teams)?

Late for what? Turns out she was referring to an email she’d just sent regarding her Cairo-bound flight arriving late at night. Wait — my 75-year-old mom is meeting me in Cairo this fall? Even after she’s tried to talk me out of this trip for the last three years? Sweet!

The Ranch has been serving chuckwagon suppers followed by music and wrangler singalongs for 60 years, and if I dig around in my daughters’ boxes of photos, I’d find some great snapshots of them in matching red cowboy hats and boots, on the swings in the playground burning off some calories after a hearty meal of barbecued chicken, baked beans and homemade applesauce, circa 1999.

Deserts are a favorite for trail runners, and this five-mile series of loops on the Utah side of Dinosaur National Monument is strikingly excellent

I don’t run on roads. They wreck your legs, your hips. Roads are for wheeled things. But I’m crazy for running on trails. Tons of trails thread the Front Range – rocky and rutted trails, straight up and screaming down trails, wildflower-surrounded trails and pine-perfumed tails. And I dig all of ‘em. We’re lucky.

But I probably prefer desert trail running to anything else, with this stipulation: Not when it is 100 degrees outside. In particular, I adore the trails of eastern Utah, the trails of soft red dirt or packed sand, the trails that dive into canyons and follow washes and climb atop mesas. I find the juxtaposition of red rocks and ground, sagebrush, juniper, cacti, blue sky, and white clouds awfully stirring. I like the sounds – the lizards scurrying across and under leaves beside vegetation-lush canyon trails, the wind, the ravens caw-cawing and even the whush sound their wings make when they come close. I like the silence, too.

I clocked about 10 miles of running in these shoes in the Utah desert last weekend; my feet ached, but I'm sold.

Thanks to Newton Running shoes, five years ago I changed my gait from heel-striking to mid- and fore-foot landing. So the move to Vibram Five-Finger running shoes — or whatever they are (Shoes? Part of a lizard costume?) – wasn’t a transformational change.

But still, it was a biggie. The FiveFingers come without support. The only thing between my feet and the ground is a thin layer of Vibram. Before going on vacation in Dinosaur National Monument with a group of Boulderites (and a rogue bunch of Basalters), I spent a few weeks walking around in them, and even going on one three-mile mountain hike in Boulder.

In addition, I walked the 10k Bolder Boulder with my family in the shoes (and that ended up being 10 miles of walking because the wait for a bus back home was too long). But in the Utah desert, I was going to run. And I wondered: Would I ditch the shoes after a mile and return to normal trail-running sneakers? Would I destroy my arches and calves? Would I bang my toe on a rock and break something? I already had one broken toe, the result of a soccer game played truly barefoot a week before (I didn’t have proper shoes, we were just playing a bunch of kids, so I went barefoot. D’oh!)

How would I deal with a long weekend of, essentially, running barefoot? With a broken toe?

Training for your first tri? Got questions about running during pregnancy? Need diabetic fueling strategies for a marathon? Want to know what comes next after you’ve bought your first pair of running shoes? Heartbroken after a break up with your running partner?

Ask Coach Jenny!

Coach Jenny

Runners love Coach Jenny because her answers are drawn from a deep well of wisdom rooted in her own struggles. Once upon a time Coach Jenny couldn’t run around the block without bursting into tears. Her big dream was to lose thirty pounds and run a 5k race.

Travel and Fitness Editor Kyle Wagner grew up in Pittsburgh and lived in Lake County, Ill., and Naples, Fla., before moving to Denver in 1993, where she reviewed restaurants for Westword before moving to The Denver Post in 2002. She considers the best days to be those that involve her teenage daughters and doing something outside, preferably mountain biking or whitewater rafting.

The pursuit of a healthier state through better living. The Denver Post's ColoradoFit blog features local experts on the latest fitness trends, active lifestyles and nutrition options in Colorado and beyond.